SANTA FE ART MUSEUMS

Santa Fe has one of the largest fine art markets in the United States.  By some measures it houses the third largest art market, after New York and Los Angeles.  Pretty remarkable for a city of only 70,000.  In our wanderings around the city we browsed a number of art galleries, none seriously, given the prices.  But, though I always had my camera along, I generally don't photograph art that is for sale.  However, on one of the rainy days we did visit two of the city's art museums, the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Georgia O'Keefe Museum.

The collection at the New Mexico Museum of Art focuses on art by New Mexican artists or that has a New Mexican theme.  Thus the collection is fairly modern and is not as extensive as I had assumed.  But it was nice.  Here is a smattering of pieces in the collection.

This last was a brass sculpture of a pair of native American dancers adorned in antlers.  They were bent over and braced up by short walking sticks.  Odd, to say the least.

One of the things that was distracting about the museum was its walls' color schemes.  I thought the bright primary colors were distracting.

But I did like the stairwell that I captured in the following shot.

The Georgia O'Keefe Museum was a different experience, largely because the collection is essentially devoted to one artist, Georgia O'Keefe.  Most of the artwork is hers, though there was an extensive collection of photos of her, as well as some informal portraits of her that were done by family members.  Here are a few of her pieces.

The collection pointed up the fact that O'Keefe was a prolific artist with a long career that showed a progression toward abstraction.

In contrast with the New Mexico Museum of Art, the decor of the O'Keefe Museum was very neutral, allowing the art to speak without distraction.  Here are a couple of shots that feature that decor.

I realize this last shot has little to do with art, but I liked it as a semiabstract.

John